Final Score: Gibbous- 3, Razrhawk- 0

[gibbous]

Maybe 6 or 7 months ago I was in the market for a new driver and wound up with a Razrhawk 9.5 tour model.  I was pretty happy with how it felt through the swing with varying qualities of impact, and it was a good 10 yards longer on the Golfsmith launch monitor than anything else in the store.  Done deal right?  Wrong…

After using the new club for maybe a month’s worth of playing rounds and practice, I’m hitting it at the range and not striking it terribly well.  After one swing, catching the ball low on the face, I see a little black blur fluttering away from me out into the grass.  It took me a minute to realize that what I had seen was the metal sole plate coming off the head of the club, leaving me with what is in the attached photo.  The bond between the epoxy on the metal plate and the composite had failed, and my new club was dead.

So the club goes back to Golfsmith, and they happily sent it back to Callaway for me with assurances that this was the first time that they had seen the problem.  A week or two later, I’ve got a replacement club and am still optimistic.  Again a month or so goes by and I’m back at the range.  After a mis-hit, there is suddenly a loud rattling inside the clubhead.  Not like a little loose piece of epoxy rattle, more like a big chunk of your clubhead is no longer attached on the inside rattle.  Club #2 goes back.

Club #3 arrives a while later, and I am no longer optimistic.  I had never broken such a new club before, and two in a row is not a good trend.  Maybe a month or so later I’m back at the range, and club #3 fails in the exact same way as club #1.  This experience has led me to the conclusion that these clubheads cannot absorb the poor energy transfer of a crappy range ball repeatedly hit low on the face at 110+ mph.  I don’t know if anyone else has experienced anything similar, I just call ‘em like I see ‘em.

When #3 went back to the store and was replaced by what would have been #4, I told the salesman I had been working with previously that I didn’t want another one if there was any possible way I could exchange the latest replacement for something else that I could actually depend on.  After a conversation with a manager and a small premium paid for a newer club than the Razrhawk which had been discounted by that time, I left very happily with a Ping i20.

So in conclusion, major thanks to the people at Golfsmith for making the situation right for me.  Thanks to the people at Callaway for sending me 3 new clubs in a pretty short turn around time, but not so much thanks for building a club with a bunch of crazy new materials glued together in a way that is liable to fall apart at the mere sight of a limited flight ball.  And finally, thanks to Ping for making the club that is truly the right one and will hopefully last me a very long time.  It was painful, but at least it turned out right in the end.

[Old1964]

Yup!

That sucks.

Read somewhere else - lots of people were having this problem if my memory serves me correctly.

Pretty sure Callaway said that they fixed the problem, but still have a lot of poor clubs in the supply pipeline.

After about the 708th club exchange, you would probably have gotten a newly manufactured one.